7 Rules For A Healthy Diet

People often ask me what I consider to be a healthy diet. In this article, I outline my seven rules for a healthy diet.

1. Eat Sufficient Protein For Your Body Weight

Consume a half gram to a gram of protein per pound of body weight. I am 190lbs so that I would target between 95 and 190 grams of protein per day. If you calculate your weight in kilograms, double that amount.

2. Vary Your Sources of Protein

Diversify among meat, fish, shellfish, eggs, and dairy products. You want to vary your protein sources as each type contains different nutrients. Furthermore, eating one kind of protein type may lead to a build-up of potentially harmful things found in those foods.

3. Eat nose-to-tail

In other words, strive to eat all the parts of the animal. An excellent method to begin is to try having liver once or twice a week and to try to incorporate bones into your diet. These bones can be either edible bones such as those found in canned fish and you can chew off the ends of chicken bones, for example, when they are well cooked and small.

Alternatively, you can boil bones to make bone broth. Bone broth can be drunk on its own or added to stews.

There are many other ways of eating nose-to-tail. There are lots of other organ meats such as kidney and heart that you could try eating. In my opinion, the liver is nutritional the most essential organ meat so try to eat it once a week.

4. Consume 1,000 milligrams of calcium per day

The simplest way to do this is to eat three servings of dairy products or three servings of edible bones per day. Bone broth does not count because the liquid taken from bones is not very rich in calcium.

It is better if the servings are composed of a mixture of edible bones and dairy products.

If you are not eating either of those two foods, you probably will need to take a calcium supplement.

5. Vary your carbohydrates among whole grains, legumes, starchy tubers, and fruits.

If you need to reduce your carbohydrates intake, you should cut out whole grains first.  However, if you do not have a specific reason to avoid grains, then whole grains can be a healthy and nutritious part of your diet.

The reason for the variation in the carbohydrates is the same as we discussed with the proteins.

6. Eat a large a quantity and variety of vegetables.

A Large quantity of vegetables means roughly 3-4 cupfuls. Also, try to vary vegetables across the colour spectrum. Ensure at least one of those cups of vegetables is dark green. Again, varying is for the same reasons we discussed for protein . and carbohydrates.

7. Always include digestive aids in your meals.

Digestive aids could include ginger, Swedish bitters, or fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, and small amounts of kombucha. You may also use a digestive enzyme supplement.

Digestive aids are important to ensure that you get the nutrients out of your foods because your diet is only as good as your digestion of that food you consume. You can get the most nutritious food in the world into the gut, but if you are not digesting and absorbing them into your body, it is a futile exercise.

Conclusion

These 7 rules are for people who do not have food allergies and food intolerances that stop you from consuming some of the specific foods highlighted above.

You may needs to avoid some of the foods that I discussed above, and that is fine, but the more foods you avoid, the more you need to pay attention to your diet to make sure it is as a healthy diet.

The broader spectrum of foods you can eat, the greater likelihood you will get everything you need without having to micromanage your diet.

Disclaimer

This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

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